11 Feb 2003

peer-to-peer radio, it works!

i've just been trying out PeerCast. for those who don't know, this is the next generation of internet radio. peer-to-peer radio in similar vein to gnutella. you stream radio streams off a whole load of other users who are listening to the same thing. this is basically underground radio.

so why use peercast? i used it because its opensource and has a decent linux client. but for the radio channel operator, in general, it doesn't need heaps of bandwidth. just stream to a couple of ppl, and those people act as relays for the stream. its actually very good. and the ogg streams sound great!

however, its not without issues. basically, you control streams thru a web interface, which is very nice and cleanly designed. but xmms doesn't play well with the playlists it generates, i little bit of cut and pasting is required to get it streaming happily. the other alternative is streamer. its a little dodgy .. i haven't tried out their client, but they claim it works under linux.